The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty

Michael Davies writes that St. Thomas Aquinas summed up the fundamental principle upon which the traditional Catholic teaching of the Church is based in this quotation from the Angelic Doctor: "Now the end of human life and society is God." From this fact our author draws the conclusion: "The State, therefore, has no right to be "secular." It must, as a State, recognize the Kingship of Jesus Christ and do Him homage; and, of course, so act that there is no contradiction between the laws it passes and the laws of God.

This book deals with the right and wrong conceptions of religious freedom. Special emphasis is placed on the weaknesses and confusions of the (non-infallible) Declaration on Religious Freedom of Vatican II, which contains a number of questionable assertions which have greatly added to the confusion of Catholics and others since it was approved by Vatican II in 1965. This makes The Second Vatican Council and Religious Liberty indispensable for any Catholic who is aware of the recent changes in the Catholic Church.

Michael Davies is an author of amazing industry and power. Between the years 1976 and 1983, he published Cranmer's Godly Order; a two-volume Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre, "about an Archbishop unpopular in his time but with views well worth pondering today;" Pope John's Council, Pope Paul's New Mass, The Order of Melchisedech, on the priesthood, Partisans of Error, on Modernism, and Newman Against the Liberals, besides nine pamphlets - all written when he was still quite young, teaching school in England, and supporting a growing family. Today these volumes are as readable and useful as they were then - and uncomfortably prophetic.